Interested in a Bates White economic consulting internship? This conversation with Kate Dressel - a previous Summer Consultant at Bates White - is exactly what you need.
Kate and Jenny Rae break down the Bates White economic consulting internship experience (hello, balloon wars!), plus:
- Tips for getting into economic consulting
- How to know if economic consulting is for you
- Misconceptions around economic consulting
- Much more
Bates White is hiring for its Summer Consultant Program (for bachelor's and master's students graduating between December 2025 and Spring 2026). Learn more and apply.
Connect with Bates White
- Bates White firm overview
- Learn more about the Summer Consultant Program
- See the Careers page
- Follow on LinkedIn
- Join an upcoming event
Management Consulted Links
- Need last-minute case interview help? Purchase coaching here - 1hr, 4hr, and 8hr packages available
- Join the Black Belt prep program
Bates White Economic Consulting Internship Overview Transcription:
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Kate Dressel is a Consultant I at Bates White in their Antitrust Litigation practice, which specializes in providing economic analysis and testimony for complex antitrust and competition matters. Prior to joining the firm full time, she interned as a participant in the Summer Consultant Program (SCP).
Kate graduated summa cum laude from the George Washington University with a Bachelor of Science in Business and a concentration in business analytics. Kate, we are so excited to have you on Strategy Simplified. Let me dive into the first question. You recently participated in the Summer Consultant Program at Bates White. What drew you to the firm in the first place?
Why Bates White?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
First of all, thank you so much for having me on. It's great to be here. I had no idea I was going to end up in economic consulting, coming from the Midwest to the East Coast, learning about all these different opportunities inside and outside of the business field was so fascinating to me.
So what drew me to the firm in the first place was really my initial interest in the field of economic consulting. I was absolutely thrilled that I found something that combined my passion for law, data analytics and economics all in one, and was actually fortunate enough to attend a Bates White info session my freshman year where I not only learned about the industry itself, but Bates White as a firm, its culture, and the amazing opportunities it has to offer, including the Summer Consultant Program.
Summer Internship Experience
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Wow, so you had the classic consulting experience. You wanted to do everything on the face of the planet, and you decided to roll it all into one as a consultant. I love it. So can you just talk a little bit about the summer Consultant Program? I didn't know that you started as a freshman looking into this. So obviously, you know, talk about when you joined it, and also, who is it for, where it takes place, how long it is, etc.
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Certainly. So the Summer Consultant Program is an opportunity for undergraduate students who just completed their junior year, and it's a 10 week long opportunity to see what it's like to work at Bates White in our office in Washington, DC. And so of course, this encompasses a wide range of both professional and social, really fun activities, but I typically like to break it into three parts.
So this is 1) your case assignment, 2) the Summer Consultant Program case study and 3) balloon wars. So the first one is your case assignment. This is a real case that you get staffed to, typically in your practice area. So for me, that was antitrust litigation. It's so cool that that's something that I had followed in the news for a while. I always like to listen to podcasts and learn about the upcoming cases, and so to get that hands on experience was really amazing. And other interns would have experienced cases in our life sciences practice or mass torts, so really a wide variety of hands on experiences.
The second part, the case study, is a friendly - emphasis on the friendly - competition between the interns, where we are split into different teams and get to work through and experience the entire life cycle of a case. Because your case assignment may be just in one small phase, you know you can only do so much in 10 weeks, or see so much of a case in 10 weeks. To give the summer consultants the entire experience of a case, we participate in this case study. So you get to start with the initial complaint of this hypothetical fak case. Then, move into the discovery phase, where you do data analysis and processing, meet with an actual expert and an economist to strategize and draft your initial reports.
And then it all culminates in a day of trial, which is a super. Fun experience where we all get together and get to present in front of the judge and jury and hear what the analysis is and the final verdict in the number of damages. So it's also really fun to see who wins, and see the end of the competition there, but that's a really fun experience to see the entire life cycle of a case.
But what's even more fun is balloon wars, which is where us interns select a non profit organization to fundraise for, and then, as the name suggests, also involves some friendly rivalry where colleagues get to balloon each other, which means they donate money to charity, and in exchange, the interns blow up a bunch of balloons and deliver them to whatever office that person wanted them to target. So super fun and a great way to, you know, raise money for charity. Will also get to socialize with your peers.
Day In The Life
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Incredible. So it sounds like it was a big waiting period for you to wait from your freshman year to your junior year. And I love, I love just hearing about the structure of the program. It sounds super exciting.
Can you just talk about out of those three things, obviously, balloon wars and the case study would be a little bit different. But what's a typical day in the life inside the practice area for you, and what was it like over the summer in particular?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Happy to share. So I'll give a typical consultant answer that there is no typical day, but I could certainly give some examples to illuminate my experience during the 10 weeks. I think one important point to emphasize in particular is that my intern cohort, we were in person five days a week to really maximize our experience throughout the 10 weeks.
I now operate on a hybrid schedule, hence the TV in the background. This is my home office. But that experience five days a week was a great opportunity where we really got to bond with each other. A typical day would start out around 9am where we come in eat breakfast at the office before maybe transitioning into a leadership Q&A panel, something of the sort, for about an hour. Then we kind of get to disperse, either have a meeting with our case assignment or just work on some tasks at our desk before returning for some type of lunch event.
Typically, this would also be something fun, like a trivia to raise money for charity before transitioning into, you know, the afternoon time, where you're maybe meeting with your case study team to strategize for the upcoming trial or planning an event for balloon wars week, if it was coming up. And the afternoon time would also typically have some type of technical training.
So we'd maybe every other day, have one to two hours of learning the programs that would help us excel in the field. So this would be learning proficiency in R or Stata or some Excel shortcuts. So really, Bates White does a great job of providing you with the school like the skills and the tools necessary to develop your skills. So before heading home for the day, you always felt like you had learned something and had an opportunity to socialize and connect with your peers.
Project Experience
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
So fun. Okay, so can you talk a little bit about the project that you worked on? And again, if there's client sensitivity, don't feel like you have to share the name of the client, but just the type of client, the type of problem that they were facing, and who was on the team that you were working with?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
So I guess just kind of an overview of where, how I was involved, I was staffed to a case, specifically during the discovery phase, which a lot of what I learned joining Bates White is to get used to some of the legal jargons. So a little bit of googling here and there definitely helped. But during this discovery phase, or during any phase that Bates White is involved in, you're retained by a variety of different you can be retained by a variety of different parties.
So this could be a government agency like the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission, or a law firm, or a set of law firms, or a private firm such as a fortune 500 company. So in this case, my team, we were retained by a law firm that was representing a client, and we were to analyze the effects or the alleged misconduct that was taking place in this, this anti stress, antitrust sphere. So, of course, can't get into too many specifics, but the team itself is typically spearheaded, kind of by this, this expert that's been retained to, you know, provide expert testimony, export reports, and several one to two PhD economists were on the team as well, which was really cool.
And then a some type of case manager. So this will typically be someone that maybe started out as a c1 like I am now a consultant one, and works their way up and has a great idea of how to best allocate tasks to the team. So we had a case manager. Around our team, who's a managing consultant, not to be confused, confused with management consulting, but a managing consultant at an economic consulting firm, and and they were a really crucial part to the team.
Then you have a few entry level individuals, especially myself, the most entry of entry at the time, which was a summer consultant. And we had, I believe, one consultant one and one or two consultant twos on the case as well, and this was during some of the earlier phases. So I know that the team eventually grew to be much larger, but at the time that I was involved, it was about eight people.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Amazing. And you mentioned earlier that you selected or had an interest in antitrust litigation. Is that the only kind of Summer Consultant Program that Bates White has, or are there others as well?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
So not that is not the case at all across the intern cohort. We are spread across all the different practices that Bates White has to offer. I could try to list them all, but I probably forget one. So you can definitely check out our website and some of our recruitment materials. But you know, the people sitting next to me in the intern room. I had someone on my right that was in mass torts, and someone on my left that was in life sciences, and I, you know, got to hear about what the environment was like in those practices, and hear about their experiences and the type of subject matter that they got to work on, which was really enlightening,
Internship Specifics
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Incredible. Well, the final thing that we didn't really talk about in specifics is, Did you do any presentations? Did you meet with the clients, present to the clients, and then what did those look like? Where is it? Is it PowerPoint? Were they long written reports? Was it your actual analysis, the raw data? Can you just talk a little bit about what the end product was from your client work over the summer?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Certainly. So kind of, as I mentioned previously, there's only so much you can do in 10 weeks when you're involved in ongoing litigation, that can sometimes take up to three or more years. But during the short amount of time that I was there, what I really enjoyed was being involved in the initial data processing and a lot of the industry background research. So a lot of the time that I spent was compiling materials from different articles and sources for the expert to inform their analysis.
And so it's really fun for me, at least, to get to do a deep dive onto any certain industry and kind of develop a proficiency in the different attributes of that specific field, and then kind of transitioning that into maybe less so of a presentation, but more so in the data side, the initial data processing and cleaning. So this would be like loading files and just data checking for missing values, ensuring that there's proper proper documentation of what each field means, has a really crucial part in the process when it comes to creating these final expert reports that are potentially used in litigation and trial.
Points of Impact
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Amazing. Well, you've already touched on this a little bit, but I just wanted to dig a little bit deeper. What was for you, the part of the project that you felt like made the most impact in highlighting what you would do at beats white and what do you think had the most impact? Or aha for the client?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Great question. Because our client was basically a law firm, rather than the actual party that was involved in litigation itself. I learned a lot more about the legal field that I was expecting. So that was the really cool part.
So kind of my aha moment was seeing the behind the scenes of how law firms interact with each other, how different economic consulting firms interact with each other, and how you can strategize and create, I don't know, not to use too many consulting buzzwords, but create some synergy around different work streams, and in terms of my own professional and personal development, seeing myself grow was really cool, and understanding how my work impacted and contributed to the larger goals of the engagement with the client. So being able to be involved in meetings with the expert, where there's this dialog, and being able to contribute to that dialog was particularly impactful for me.
Misconceptions About Economic Consulting
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Based on what you learned over this summer, what is a common misconception candidates have about economic consulting?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
I would say beyond candidates maybe mixing it up with management consulting or other types of consulting, one conception would probably involve placing economic consulting or the people that work there into into some type of box, I guess, to kind of illustrate that point a little bit more. I am not an econ major. Never was, never have been, maybe never will be. And so I was a bit intimidated when I showed up to the office, and it seemed like a lot of my peers were and, you know, I had a little bit of that imposter syndrome. I was like, oh, to be successful in econ consulting, do I need to have been an econ major?
You know, I was business major, but the more that I was involved in the day to day work, I realized that the skills that are needed, needed for this role are beyond technical. There's a lot of, you know, strategic thinking and communication skills that you can leverage, and so there's no exact profile of who can be successful as an economic consultant. And similarly, I think a misconception about the work is that, oh, it is just in, you know, antitrust litigation, or it's just in identifying, you know, bank fraud, or, you know, all these different subject matters.
But the type of work that we're involved in spans so many different policy landscapes and industries and all of these different complex legal and regulatory procedures, rather, whether it be to companies trying to merge, et cetera, there's so many different types of subjects that our work can encompass that anyone who's really willing to Be passionate about the work and dig deep is going to find a way to, you know, kind of have a strategic edge in the field.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
During your internship, you obviously saw something that you liked, so what made you decide to stick with the firm full time, and when did you make that decision?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Okay, so I think the real question is, what did it make me want to stay? I guess I just have to say every single aspect of the firm is structured with such intentionality, from the, I mean, I have to say the catered breakfast every morning, definitely, you know, helped nudge me in the direction of accepting the return offer. But down to the, you know, benefits and the community organization, I mentioned balloon wars, like, that's not just something that they do for interns. That's something that everyone in the firm gets involved in, rallies around.
I really couldn't imagine a more supportive, encouraging, fun, you know, a little bit nerdy, but but fun environment to to be involved in and and also, like practically all of us, interns returned, and so seeing all my friends faces in the office each day, being back full time just brings me so much joy in terms of when I accepted the offer that was or I made the decision in like, right? Basically, once the internship ended and I was extended the offer, it was a bit of a no brainer for me,
Recruiting
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Incredible. Well, just to move on to a broader set of questions just around recruiting in general, you've seen more than just your summer internship now. So what makes someone a good fit for economic consulting? You mentioned you don't have to be an economist or be an econ major, but what does make someone a good fit for it, and what are indicators that the industry might not be a right fit for someone you've probably seen the best and the worst. We'd love to hear your insights on this,
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Broadly speaking, I'd say someone that's a good fit for economic consulting is probably a little bit nerdy, has a curiosity for the world and public policy or the legal environment in some aspect. Certainly it helps have a little bit of technical skills, or an interest in developing your technical skills in terms of areas or indicators that it might not be the best fit would be someone that just hates working in teams, if you just absolutely cannot stand working with others, I would not suggest probably any type of consulting, now that I think about it, but especially not economic consulting, when you can be working late at night with your fellow colleagues looking through footnotes. You want to be someone that likes spending time with people.
Additionally, I don't think someone who who really likes to jump to conclusions really fast would be a great fit, or maybe lacks attention to detail. But I guess I do, actually, now that I think about it, have some graded. Advice from a mentor of mine that really helped kind of shape me and direct me in the right direction.
She graduated and went straight into economic consulting, and then pivoted later on by getting her MBA and switching to management consulting, where she now, if I remember correctly, works in like high stakes, like almost bankruptcy cases, advising clients, and a piece of advice that she gave really stuck out to me, and that was that if you enjoy getting answers like 99.999% right, like you really care about that attention to detail and working maybe 80% fast, like, still fast paced, but you know, not, not not to 100% then economic consulting is perfect for you, because you're in this high stakes legal environment, you really need to have that attention to detail, because it's going to get brought up in court potentially.
And it can still be fast paced, but it's not going to be 100% fast paced all the time. Now, conversely, if you love working 99.99% fast you know, high utilization all the time, and being right, maybe 50 to 80% of the time, that maybe management consulting is better for you. You know, if you really want that high stakes thinking on your feet, you need to give an answer to a client a slide deck tomorrow. Maybe there's one typo. Obviously, you don't want typos, but that kind of gave me a more general idea at, like, a more overview level of the type of person that might be a good fit for these different areas of consulting. And so that was, yeah, just particularly helpful for me.
Knowing If Bates White Is Right For You
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I love it. Now you didn't give us the backstory. Just fast forwarded freshman year, all of a sudden, you appear as a summer consultant. So did you have a framework for identifying how Bates White was right for you? Who else did you look at for your summer and how should other consulting aspirants focus on joining the industry? Do you have a framework that you'd recommend?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Yeah, I love frameworks, but a lot of it is honestly trial and error. I explored internships of kind of completely different fields. I had a digital communications marketing internship at a nonprofit my freshman summer that my freshman year was also recruiting in the finance industry. So I ended up working in New York City in corporate finance my sophomore summer, and through those experiences, I I gained valuable insights into not only my my interests professionally, but also personally, my values and the type of environment that I'd want to surround myself in.
I knew that for recruitment cycles, especially in consulting, economic consulting included the process aligns a lot with your junior summer internship potentially being what your full time opportunity can be post grad. And so I wanted to be really intentional about how I approached the recruitment process. So I took a lot of time to do as many coffee chats as I could, and had stayed in contact with, you know, people that I actually had met during that beats white info session my freshman year, and at other, you know, economic consulting firms and so leverage those contexts that you have to learn about how they're doing in their in their current work, and learn more about the culture.
Because, I just mentioned maybe a framework for deciding what type of consulting you'd want to be involved in. Now it's time to discern what's the right culture fit and what are your values? What type of work life balance do you want at the end of the day? It's, you know, it's your nine to five that you'll be working, or nine to nine, I guess, depending on the type of consulting you end up in.
So you're going to want to like it, you know, it's you that's working this job, not your brother's best friend who thinks XYZ consulting is the most prestigious, best firm to work at. You know, it's you going to be that's working that job. So you want to make sure it's a job that you like.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I'm assuming that after this conversation, we're gonna have a lot of people that want to work at Bates white. They're gonna see what it's like and get excited about it because your enthusiasm is so contagious. So you know when they're beating down your door, how do they stand out? How do they tell you we're the right fit for Bates white?
Because we know that y'all have a lot of great candidates and a huge pipeline of talent. So how do you decide, how does somebody really separate themselves, demonstrate that they've done the work that you're looking for? Highlight who they are, and let's just get really tactical, like talk about resume, talk about networking, talk about interviews.
How To Stand Out
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Okay, great. I could talk about this forever, because I did serve as a peer coach in the Career Center at the GW business school so I'll rein myself in a little bit.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
We can probably talk about such some terrible mistakes that people made, right?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Yeah, don't have multiple fonts on your resume. Don't use red color for your text. Avoid Comic Sans, if possible. There's a few key points in there. Definitely use spell check, though. That should be a no brainer.
To start out more broadly with just just some basic advice that I think sometimes can get overlooked is, don't jump to conclusions about the industry, especially economic consulting, what it is or what we do. Take the time to really do the research about the type of cases that we're working on. You know, it can be easy to all of a sudden be like, Oh, it's because I don't have a 4.0 GPA that I didn't get this internship or, you know, I used the wrong font on my resume, for example.
But really, just kind of take a few steps back and be like, do I know the basics of this industry? Am I able to explain it to my mom, my dad, a parent, you know, a friend from school who's in the engineering department instead of in econ or business, you know, if you can't kind of describe it on a basic level, it's kind of a little gut check of, oh, maybe I should watch some YouTube videos, maybe I should listen to some podcasts.
And then once you've kind of done that research on the cases, then it's a great time to reach out for those networking conversations with professionals in the field, and come into those with an open mind, be ready to ask questions and get answers that maybe you're not expecting. So I always say use open ended questions if you want real responses. If you use really directive questions, you're really probably not going to get a good idea of what's going on in that person's career or at the firm.
And then lastly, just really find ways to align your professional competencies, personal ones as well on your resume or your application, by referencing the job description, you know, really reading through, oh, the Stata or R that's utilized at Bates white. I took a class where I did that, let me brush up on some of those skills, and then I feel, or take a LinkedIn learning, and now I feel more comfortable including that in the skills section on my resume. So really just kind of coming in with an open mind, learning about the industry, reaching out to professionals. People typically love to talk about themselves. I mean, that's why podcasts exist, I guess. And so definitely utilize that and get to know people and build a network in that way.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Do's & Don't On Landing An Internship
I love the emphasis on the old school way of doing things. I think people are often so looking for the new silver bullet like you should make a Tiktok video about yourself, but, but that that right? I think there's harkening back to the curiosity, the interest and also that attention to detail. Those were great emphasis points there. Thank you for sharing. I think that'll be really helpful for a lot of people. Any final words of wisdom about do's or don't do's, if somebody is interested in securing one of those coveted offers for an internship or for full time? Yeah,
Bates White: Kate Dressel
I know it's cliche, but be yourself. And I'd say specifically in a case interview, it's more important that you demonstrate a willingness to redirect and pick yourself up after you made a mistake with a calculation, for example, than to steamroll the interviewer with this confidence to prove that you're the best, you know, mathematician or econ whiz there is because it's more important that you indicate that you're someone that the interviewer would want to work with than someone that always gets things right 100% of the time, you know, take a deep breath and bring your whole authentic self to that interview, because at the end of the day, you're interviewing The firm as much as the firm is interviewing you.
Interview Prep
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
This is a little bit of an aside question, but I just I want to ask it, because I think it may be burning on people's minds. We see a lot of people try to figure out how to under prepare for the interviews. Have you ever seen somebody succeed? In an interview when they have to do math, etc, without preparing for the practical or the case portion. And I'm just curious if there is. I'd love to know about them and how they did it. But if there's not, I also think that people might be interested in knowing about that.
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Yeah. So I definitely wish that I had some like magic, you know, cookbook or formula for how to perfectly approach case interviews, I definitely would say it can be really easy to get in your head and so finding some way to center and ground yourself and have like maybe a typical way that you approach problems, rather than feeling like you need to, you know, practice the same type of formula or memorize certain formulas over and over and over again until you get them right and know them like the back of your hand.
I think it's more important to know how you approach problems and and learn how to explain your thought processes and your thinking. Because at the end of the day, from what I know of the the interview process is it's more important to get an insight into you know what's going on in that that brain of yours, rather than just knowing what the output is at the end of trying to solve a problem.
Final Thoughts
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I love it. Any final things that you just feel like people have to know about Bates White, have to know about the internship, need to know about the process, even though Know thyself was one of your key messages. Is there anything else that you want to share with them but share with them before I wrap up with a couple fun questions? Yeah, certainly.
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Oh. Again, I feel like it's hard to know where to begin if you're asking me what I love about Bates White. But I guess my general piece of advice to give to students is to determine your own metrics for success. You know, what is that bar that you want to meet? What's not, you know, your brother's best friend that thinks X, Y, Z, consulting is great metric for success. But what are those goals that you want to reach? And what type of environment do you want to see yourself in a few years?
And the sooner you realize that, the better, because I've definitely seen, you know, a few friends and colleagues of mine that go after that really, you know, shiny, glittery thing, which you know, to me, kind of was economic consulting, so I feel pretty lucky that it is as great as it seemed on paper. But not all that glitters is gold really important to take a step back, maybe look at some of those smaller consulting firms, or those externship opportunities at a non profit, you know, consulting firm, so definitely take that time for self exploration and compare yourself to the past versions of yourself and the future versions of yourself, not the people around you.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
That wraps up all of the wild and wonderful questions about me. It's why I can tell by your enthusiasm. You could pretty much talk about it all day. But I do want people to just get at the end, a glimpse of who you are and what makes you so right for this role. So first of all, tell me about your favorite museum experience and why?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Oh, fun question. So it has to be planet word in Washington, DC, I was able to go with my family, which was amazing, because the first time that I had my entire immediate family to visit me in DC was for my college graduation in May. So of course, I had to plan everything out on an agenda, minute by minute to ensure that I showed them everything that DC has to offer, which is a lot, and number one on the list was planet word. So highly recommend everyone checks it out, amazing.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Okay, I'm gonna add that to the list. I've got kids who really do like museums, so I'm grateful for that second question I hear through the grapevine that you are a professed avid rock climber, true or false? And if so, like, what is, what is the pinnacle of climbing for you so far? What's the bucket list climb?
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Oh, okay, so I it is true. I started in middle school, and in terms of, like, favorite memories so far with it would have to be rock climbing with my dad back home in Iowa. So the landscape in Iowa isn't necessarily fruitful with opportunities for outdoor rock climbing. So it definitely stuck to the to the indoor local gyms. That's where a lot of my my memories come from. I'd say a dream climb, then would definitely be getting more into the outdoor rock climbing. I know there's some gorgeous places in the DMV area. So I don't have a car yet, but maybe a few years down the line, when I have the ability to go and explore the area, I'm excited to do.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I love that, fantastic. And then - final fun question, who is one person from history you would love to get dinner with. Oh, okay,
Bates White: Kate Dressel
I would probably say Amelia Earhart, because I feel like I have a lot to learn from her bravery, especially since sometimes I get a little nervous on airplanes, in the air and sometimes during interviews too. So I feel like there's, there's a lot to learn from her bravery there.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Maybe if you could have dinner with her, you could figure out what happened too.
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Exactly, exactly. Do some investigative research there.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
That's exactly right. I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, for sharing the insider's view of Bates White the balloon wars. I have to say, when you mentioned that at the first place, I all like a picture because I have young kids were water balloons, and I was trying to picture everybody, like, rolling into the office and then going out on, you know, on like a street or in a in a park, and having a balloon war fight. So I'm glad to know that it's slightly more elegant than that, but overall, just just thrilled to have you and and delighted that your insight and your excitement for the firm and excited to hear what happens with you in your future. Thank you again for coming on today.
Bates White: Kate Dressel
Great. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.